


welcome home, theseus

by Zannolin



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Exile, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), References to Depression, Sad Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, VERY SAD ENDING DONT READ IF YOU DONT WANT SAD ENDING, basically i had a thought and then it manifested on stream and then my friends said write it, but here we are, i literally never thought i'd see the day i wrote fuckin rpf, in the year of our satan 2020, this is very dark and i am very sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27909841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zannolin/pseuds/Zannolin
Summary: As he watches, Tommy can’t help but see Tubbo’s tight, pinched expression as he had exiled him, as Fundy, outraged, had insisted he was acting like Schlatt.Ahead of him, Wilbur’s laugh rings out in the sun-dappled forest, and Tommy thinks, tiredly,what’s so bad about being the next Wilbur, if it ends like that?
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 47
Kudos: 1011





	welcome home, theseus

**Author's Note:**

> First off, in case you didn't read the tags, THIS IS SOME DARK CONTENT. Trigger warnings for suicidal thoughts/ideation, suicide, major character death, and unhappy endings. PLEASE be safe and do not read this if that will be a problem for you.
> 
> Second, do know that I didn't write this lightly. I don't go ooo hehe death all the time, it actually came from a very personal place because some of today's (12/5) stream from Tommy really hit different and....I needed to write this out so it wouldn't be knocking around in my head making things messier than they were.
> 
> Third, apparently I write rpf now. That's a thing. What the fuck, how did I wake up here, why am I in the minecraft fandom and would you like to join my religion aka SleepyBoisInc?
> 
> Finally, again, be safe reading this. Please.

The world is full of parallel lines, running and twisting and turning, sometimes crossing, never touching, never changing. All the world’s a stage, and all the stories follow the same patterns, history repeating itself again and again no matter what changes you try to make. Heroes, villains, damsels, quests. Wins and losses, falls from grace, a tragedy told in six circular parts so many times over that the colors have faded and strands have frayed, each hero worn down to threadbare nothingness, naught but grey scraps clinging together and attempting to remember the glory of their past, or maybe just one single happy moment.

 _Name one hero who was happy,_ someone demands, and a month, a week, a _day_ ago, Tommy would have grinned brashly and boasted _me, big man, TommyInnit._

But not today. Not anymore.

Today he rows after Dream until his arms ache and burn, drenched in the icy rain with practically nothing to his name and only a shade of what his brother once was at his side. L’manburg, his L’manburg, fades into the distance behind him.

Tommy tries not to think about it.

(He fails.)

_I want to go back._

* * *

He never asked for this. He never wanted to be the hero, the protagonist, the Atlas who trembled and gasped and _cracked_ under the weight of the world, not really. Who would want to be the hero in a world like this?

If you asked him what he’s been fighting for all this time, Tommy doesn’t think he’d be able to tell you. L’manburg is too big an answer, the discs too small. Maybe it was for Wilbur, but Wilbur is gone. Maybe it was for Tubbo, but Tubbo is done with him now.

He doesn’t fit anymore, a jigsaw piece tossed into the wrong box, shapes and colors and edges all jumbled and glaringly wrong.

(Maybe he never fit at all.

Maybe no one ever noticed because there was always the chaos and thunder of rebellion and war shaking their world every day, and they were too busy asking him to fight a losing battle to notice what he really was underneath the bruises and bandages and bloodstains.)

_“You wanna be a hero, Tommy?”_

_(No, I don’t.)_

_“Then **die** like one!”_

_(It’s not my time to die.)_

* * *

Wilbur — Ghostbur? Sometimes it’s easier to think of him that way, but at the end of the day, it’s still Wilbur. Still his brother. Missing bits and pieces, lighter than Tommy ever saw him in life, somehow, but still _Wilbur_ — tries hard to cheer him up, their first night in exile.

It’s dark and damp and cold, and Tommy huddles in their little shack built of rubble with frozen toes and hands bloody and raw from rowing and building. Every muscle aches, but none so fierce as his heart every time he thinks of L’manburg, glowing under stars and paper lanterns; of the prime path with its planks worn smooth and true; of his home and his friends and all he gave up to keep them.

(In the end, he still lost it all. What hero ever won without sacrifice? And who has need of a hero when all your battles have been fought and won?)

He tries to block out the sounds of the mobs creeping by outside the shoddy walls, mumbling and clacking, occasionally tangling and screeching, filling the dark with too many noises to sleep. The rain drips through the roof, and Wilbur’s presence makes everything that much colder. He tries to hide his shivering, but Wilbur notices.

(It’s been so long since Wilbur _really_ noticed something about Tommy.)

In the light of their single guttering torch, Tommy watches Wilbur pull a familiar coat from the bag he brought along. It’s tattered and singed and stained irreparably dark with blood, and there’s a hole in the center of the back that Tommy flinches to look at, but it’s warm and dry and Wilbur drapes it over him gently, running his fingers through Tommy’s hair like an icy breeze, like he used to when they were younger and unscarred by this world, so Tommy tucks his chin to his chest and curls stiff fingers into the fabric gratefully.

It smells like Wilbur used to, even under the blood, like lavender soap and cedar and the faint steel of his guitar strings. (Now he smells like brine and books and candle smoke, and something inside of Tommy _twists._ )

_I’m so sorry, Tommy._

He can’t get Tubbo’s voice out of his head. He never thought he wouldn’t be grateful for the day Wilbur’s hushed exclamation of _let’s be the bad guys_ stopped haunting him.

_Name one hero who was happy._

Tommy buries his nose in Wilbur’s coat and _cries._

_(You can’t.)_

* * *

Tommy throws himself into his work, into mining and crafting and building, raiding the nearby village for supplies and losing himself in the familiar grind of survival. It’s easier not to think about the way things are when he has the pain of hard work to distract him, ground him. He mines iron and coal and spends hours smelting, working to make better tools and armor to protect himself from the mobs. They’re much more plentiful out here, in the unprotected darkness of the wilds.

Wilbur wants another furnace for terracotta, so Tommy makes him a furnace. Wilbur wants to make a vacation home — _campsite,_ Tommy insists, bitterly pushing away thoughts of a vacation home built far away from nations and wars with careful hands, blown up and left to rot in the rain and the quiet dark just a few nights prior, _we’re making a campsite_ — so Tommy helps him fell trees and raise walls of birch and oak.

As foreign as this place is, the rhythm of life is familiar. It’s like when they built Pogtopia, sheltered in the cool darkness of the ravine. It’s a little like building L’manburg, raising the walls with hands stained from dandelions.

Things are easier with Wilbur here, and Tommy is grateful.

It makes his throat tight to think about it, about the unquestioning loyalty he’s been shown. Wilbur didn’t have to come. Even if he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on, he didn’t _have_ to choose Tommy.

He never did before.

No one did.

Again and again, Tommy chose his friends and L’manburg, and they never chose him back.

He thinks of a quiet moment on a bench, a wistful dream — _we could just run away._

Tommy grits his teeth and painstakingly shears bark off logs until his fingers are trembling and sweat stings his eyes. Maybe it will disguise the all-too-familiar burn of tears fought back with the ferocity of a ravager.

* * *

Technoblade visits, of course he does, that _bastard._ He laughs at Tommy, doubles over wheezing when he asks how the government of his nation worked out for him. Tommy snaps back, angrier than he has been in _days,_ and the familiar fury only a sibling can incite courses through his chest.

He had denounced Techno as his brother after the war for L’manburg, after the Withers were defeated and the dust from the explosions settled. He’d lost two brothers that day, he’d said, but now Tommy looks up at the shit-eating grin beneath that damned pig mask and sees his oldest brother smiling back at him.

(The fire in his chest feels a little less all-consuming and a little more like a familiar hearth.)

It’s almost like old times again, when Phil turned them loose to go camping on their private server when the three of them go to be too much, too rowdy to stop squabbling and listen. Tommy has lost everything, but for a few precious hours, he has both his brothers back, whether he can admit it to himself or not.

* * *

_If I can’t be the next Schlatt, you can’t be the next Wilbur._

Tubbo’s words ring in Tommy’s ears as he emerges from the mine he’s carved out, stopping to rest for a moment. Squinting through the bright light, Tommy watches Techno listen patiently as Wilbur chatters on about something, erecting more logs around their little campsite.

He’s _happy,_ happier, maybe, than Tommy has ever seen him, just running about and building a base, setting up a temporary home without a care in the world. He doesn’t remember the sad things at all, Wilbur had said.

As he watches, Tommy can’t help but see Tubbo’s tight, pinched expression as he had exiled him, as Fundy, outraged, had insisted he was acting like Schlatt.

Ahead of him, Wilbur’s laugh rings out in the sun-dappled forest, and Tommy thinks, tiredly, _what’s so bad about being the next Wilbur, if it ends like that?_

* * *

(Afterwards, they bicker and snipe the entire day, and when Techno leaves, it’s all Tommy can do to keep from grabbing his cape in both raw, bandaged hands and _begging_ him not to leave.)

* * *

They name it Logsteadshire and laugh together over ridiculous puns. Tommy goes to sleep shielded by the walls they erected, and thinks not of obsidian walls rising ever higher with every slip he makes, but of the walls he helped build around a fledgling nation, pride and joy bubbling in his chest as he spoke the name he himself gave it.

_L’manburg._

He misses his home.

* * *

The world is full of parallel lines, looping and diving and twisting, and sometimes the real question is not what direction your line is heading, but just _who_ you are mirroring in every step and action.

 _I don’t want to be the bad guy,_ Tommy had told Ranboo, sitting on a bench with the moon blocked out by a blackstone tower.

(Look how well that went.)

 _I don’t want to be angry anymore,_ he whispers to Dream today, watching a portion of his hard work go up in flames, battered fingers gripping tightly at his shirtsleeves. He doesn’t. He’s so _tired._

Lines and paths and parallels, story tropes and tragedies, who are you TommyInnit? Who do you mirror?

Is he the hero of this story, or the villain?

Maybe he doesn’t want to be a part of this story at all.

(Maybe Wilbur had the right idea all along.)

* * *

The Nether is warm and his toes are cold, and Tommy does not want to be the hero. Everyone has gone through the portal to L’manburg, to his _home,_ so close and yet so far, and Tommy is so, so tired.

He walks to the precipice almost without realizing, stares downwards at the slow simmer of the lava so far below, and thinks, _it must be very warm down there._

Something inside him aches and yearns, and not for the first time, Tommy is scared.

He backs away, tries to blink away the bright spots that swim across his vision — or are those tears? He can’t tell. His eyes hurt.

Everything hurts.

(He’s so, so tired.)

 _I want to go home,_ Tommy thinks, and he stands atop the precipice once more.

Atlas looks down from his perch, shoulders shaking and façade long-fractured, back too long bent from the strain of the world, and he _shatters._

Tommy takes one step, serene, and like Icarus, he _falls._

* * *

“Move a little to the left, Sapnap,” Bad calls, and Dream hears Sapnap _huff_ in the cold night air.

“If I move any more to the left, I’m gonna fall off the goddamn tree!”

“You’re making this picture very difficult,” Ghostbur observes, and Dream sighs. He should go back to the portal, make sure Tommy’s not trying to sneak through while they’re distracted.

He probably wouldn’t do something so stupid — except, no. This is _Tommy._ He just might. The look he had in his eyes today, when Dream glanced back at him a few times…it unsettles him. Dream turns to head back to the portal and freezes.

There, not a few yards away, a gangly figure in a familiar red and white shirt. Tommy is facing away from him, staring up at the starry sky, speckled with Ghostbur’s paper lanterns, hands dangling limply at his side.

 _I told him not to,_ Dream thinks, brows furrowing behind his mask. It’s in annoyance, he tells himself, and struggles to quash any hint of regret that might wriggle inside of him. Regret will get him nowhere. He set down rules, and they must be followed.

“I warned you, Tommy,” he calls, drawing his weapon and striding forward. “You should have listened to me.”

Tommy doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, and Dream’s blade swings downward—

—to slice through nothing at all.

History repeats itself in parallel lines, a tragedy retold in six tired parts. The corruption of Wilbur, the downfall of Schlatt, now the exile of Tommy; they’ve all come to their end. The visionary has mellowed, the tyrant is gone, and Theseus has returned at last.

The ghost of TommyInnit turns to face him with a beaming smile and a terrifying relief in his eyes, and says,

_“I’m home.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Find my perpetually angsty ass on [tumblr](https://zannolin.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/zannolin), and [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/zannolin/)! I'm currently manifesting the dsmp plot and crying over the block men 24/7.


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